MWPP era, Second Year. A side story for A Tale of Two Puppies though it's not entirely necessary to have read ToTP. Remus discovers a special skill the other boys don't have. Slashy hints, if you want to see them.

Warning: Oneshot. A spin-off (in
a way) from A Tale of Two Puppies – you really ought to read
ToTP first, but I don't think it's completely necessary.
This scene takes place during the Marauders' second year, shortly
before the end of the fall term, somewhere in the middle of Chapter 5
of ToTP. Remus's POV.

Dedication: To Dragon's
Obsession, who requested it. I hope you like it, it's a long one
(by my standards, anyway).

I
Don't Know, It's A Mystery

"… Which is why
you shouldn't face a boggart alone," Remus finished.

"Right, right,"
Lily nodded, scribbling madly in her Muggle notebook. "But how does
it know what your worst fear is? What if your worst fear changes?"

"No one knows how
it knows," Remus explained. "But the boggart does always
know, and it will become whatever it is you most fear at the time."

Remus's mouth
twitched. It always amused him that Lily took down his words as
faithfully as any professor's.

"All right,"
she said at last, looking up with a smile. "I think I'm set. Do
you want my Potions notes from the class you missed last week?"

"That would be
great, Lily, thank you," Remus smiled back.

Lily rummaged in
her bag. "I'll go over them with you, if you'd like, so you can
ask me any questions now, instead of having to wait – oh, bugger,
I've left them in my room." She stood. "Do you want to wait
here, or…"

"I'll go back
with you," Remus replied, also rising and beginning to pack away
his things. "I can copy them in the common room as easily as here."

"You mean Sirius
and James aren't here," Remus elaborated for her. "They can be
distracting. That's why I come here to study so often, they don't
much care for libraries, so they won't bother me, which means I can
get my work done." He held the door.

They walked for a
few moments in silence, then, "Are you going to be home over the
holidays?" she asked in a rush. "We're having a party on
Christmas Eve, and my Mum said I could invite some friends, since
Petunia's going to have all her friends by, and I'd really love
for you to come, and of course your mum and dad are welcome, too, if
they'd like to come, and we'll have food and a tree, and Winnie
and Alice are going to come, but I was hoping, since you get on all
right with them, that you wouldn't mind, even if it is a lot of
girls, and, well, I'd just really like for you to come." She
stopped abruptly, redder than ever.

Remus fought the
impulse to burst out laughing. When he was sure he had mastered
himself, he turned to her and grinned. "I'd love to come," he
said.

Lily beamed.

"Silver tinsel,"
Remus said to the Fat Lady, and politely helped Lily through the
portrait hole when it opened.

"Thanks," Lily
said, still beaming as she led the way across the common room. "Ask
your parents as well, if you'd like. Winnie's mum and dad are
coming, though I'm not sure about Alice. Mum says, 'the more the
merrier' – oh, but it will be mostly Muggles, so…"

"Well, yes," he
agreed slowly. "You stopped, so I stopped so I wouldn't run into
you, and now I'm standing… What?"

She was shaking her
head. "No," she said. "You're standing on the stairs!"

What is she on
about? "So are you."

"Yes, but I'm a
girl."

"So what if
you're a girl?"

"You're a boy!"

"Yes, Lily. I
know I'm a boy. And I know you're a girl. Are you feeling all
right? Should I take you to the hospital wing?" Remus was beginning
to feel rather concerned.

"No!" Lily
shook her head fiercely and grabbed Remus's shoulders, shaking him
as well. "These are the girls' dormitories! You're standing on
the girls' staircase! And you're a boy! Boys aren't supposed to
come up here!"

"Oh." Remus
grabbed the redhead's wrists to make her stop shaking him. "I
didn't realize. You could have just said so. I'll meet you back
down in the common room, then, shall I?"

"No!" Lily
exclaimed for the third time, clearly losing her patience, which
Remus thought was a bit unfair of her. "You don't understand!
Boys can't come up here!"

Remus felt lost and
was beginning to feel slightly irritated. "Which is why I –" he
began.

"Boys can't
come up here, Remus," Lily was obviously rather desperately trying
to explain, voice rising in both volume and pitch. "They can't."

"I'm sure no
one will be that upset, since I didn't know –"

"You're not
understanding me!"

"Obviously I'm
not, so if you'd please tell me plainly what is it you're –"

"The stairs don't
let boys up!" Lily stopped, took a deep breath, then said, more
slowly and in a normal voice, "Boys can't get up the stairs. If a
boy tries to climb these stairs, they flatten out and form a slide.
It's been like that since the beginning. Didn't you read
Hogwarts, A History?"

"Yes," Remus
said slowly, trying to remember. "But then… Oh, right!" That's
right, he thought. "The Founders thought girls were more
trustworthy than boys, so only the girls' staircases do that. I'd
forgotten all about it."

"Exactly!" Lily
nodded emphatically. "But you, Remus Lupin, are a boy
and yet you are standing on the girls' stairs. You
are not sliding back down to the common room like a fool as all your
predecessors have done."

"Maybe they're
broken?" Remus suggested dubiously.

Lily looked as
doubtful as Remus felt. "Can things like that break?"

Remus shrugged,
then a horrible thought hit him. What if it's because I'm a
werewolf? Male animals have no trouble going up the stairs. Winnie's
cat is male – nasty little bugger. Do the stairs know? What else
could it be?

Lily frowned,
giving Remus a thoughtful look.

Remus grinned
nervously. "Maybe they know I'm just here to get your notes?"
he offered jokingly, hoping to distract her with their original
quest.

Lily laughed and
continued up the stairs, but the thoughtful look remained.

"This is me,"
she said, pushing open the door at the top of the stairs.

Remus followed her
into a room that was nearly identical to his own.

"Just a moment,"
she said, hunting through one of the trunks.

"Mmhm." Remus
looked around the room with some interest, but remained standing
uncomfortably by the door, unsure where to go.

"You can sit
down, if you like," Lily's voice was slightly muffled as she dug
through her things. "Make yourself at home. My bed's the – ah
ha! Here it is!" she straightened with the elusive notebook held
triumphantly in the air.

"Wonderful,"
Remus smiled in relief. "Shall we go back downstairs?"

"Sure," Lily
nodded as she re-crossed the room back to where Remus was still
hovering by the door.

She'd barely
opened the door when a loud, klaxon-like wailing echoed in the
stairwell and the stairs disappeared, sinking into a ramp.

"A little late,
isn't it?" Lily inquired, looking over her shoulder at the brunet
and smirking.

"Um…" Remus
stared uncertainly at the smooth stone slide.

"Someone else
must have set it off," Lily said. "Though I suppose this proves
it still works."

"Right."

Lily giggled.
"Well, let's go!"

"But, how do
we…?"

"We slide!"
Lily said excitedly. "Like this!" She stepped out onto the slide
sideways, as though surfing, placing one hand lightly against the
wall for balance, and whooshed out of site around the bend.

"Oh, we slide,"
Remus muttered sarcastically. "Whyever didn't I think of
that. Bloody girls." But he stepped out onto the slide, following
Lily down the steep, circular slope, trying to not flail his free arm
in his quest for balance.

"Jump!" Lily's
voice yelled as he neared the bottom.

Remus obeyed
automatically, just in time to avoid tripping over the last couple
steps as the slide turned back into stairs. He landed on the
wonderfully solid floor of the common room next to a widely grinning
Lily and a scowling pair of black-haired boys.

"Wasn't that
fun?" asked Lily.

"Yeah," Remus
mumbled. "Loads."

"Rem likes his
feet firmly on the ground," Sirius informed the green-eyed girl in
a tone of voice that added, 'Which you would know, if you were his
friend.'

"Oh, lighten up,
Black," Lily said, then snickered as she realized what she had
said.

Sirius ignored her.
"How did you get up there, Rem?" he demanded. "Some girl," he
gestured vaguely behind him, "said you'd gone up there with
Evans, but as soon as we tried to follow the stairs changed."

"I, er, don't
really know," Remus admitted. "I just walked up, and there wasn't
a problem until just now, and I guess that was your fault, actually,
not mine."

"What were you
doing up there, anyway?" James inquired suspiciously.

"I invited him,
Potter," Lily snapped.

"What for?"
Sirius was still staring at Remus. It was making him uncomfortable to
have those grey eyes fixed on him as though they could see into the
very core of his being.

"I just needed to
borrow her Potions notes," Remus explained, feeling far more
uncomfortable now than he had upstairs in Lily's room.

"Potions notes?"
Sirius scoffed. "Term's almost over. What do you need notes for?"

"I missed our
last class," Remus reminded his friend patiently. "I had to
visit my mother, remember?" He winced internally as he said it. He
hated the lie.

"Borrow mine,
then," Sirius suggested in a tone that sounded far more like a
command. "I'll give them to you later. Let's go get something
to eat." He grabbed Remus by the elbow and started tugging him
towards the portrait hole.

"He's more than
welcome to my notes, Black," Lily snapped, taking Remus's other
arm and trying to pull him in the opposite direction, towards where
Winnie and Alice were sitting, doing work.

"No," Lily
retorted, yanking Remus back in the other direction. "He's coming
to study with me."

"Keep your girly
hands to yourself!" Sirius growled.

Tug.

"You keep your
hands to yourself!" Lily hissed back.

Yank.

This is what a
rope must feel like between two dogs playing tug-of-war, Remus
thought in annoyance. Only I'm the canine. I never thought I'd
feel sorry for the rope. He scowled at James, who was just
staring at the redheaded girl with a somewhat awestruck look on his
face. Useless, he grumbled silently as his friends continued
to jerk him back and forth. Utterly useless. And where's Peter?

"You're
behaving like a child, Black," Lily gritted.

Yank.

"You're the
bloody child!" Sirius snarled.

Tug.

All right. I've
had enough of this. "Let go," Remus said in a low voice.

They didn't hear.

Yank.

Tug.

"Let me go," he
repeated louder, irritation building.

They kept sniping.

Tug.

Yank.

"I said let go!"
Remus bellowed.

Sirius and Lily
both froze. Grey and green eyes turned to Remus.

James's hazel
eyes turned from the redhead to stare at the brunet.

The entire common
room had gone silent as everyone stared at the second years.

This is so
embarrassing. I'm going to kill these two for this. And maybe James
for good measure. What has gotten into them? Remus lowered his
voice, fighting the urge to blush. "Lily," he turned to the girl.
"Thank you for the notes. If we could go over them tomorrow, that
would be excellent."

Lily nodded, still
looking slightly dumbfounded by Remus's outburst, but also looking a
trifle hurt. She released her hold on Remus's arm.

"Sirius," Remus
cut him off, turning to stare at the boy holding his arm.

Sirius's eyes
widened slightly at the use of his name.

"I asked you to
let go of me." Remus kept his voice soft, but his embarrassment at
being such a center of attention was acute and he was not happy about
it.

Sirius let go at
once, color rising in his cheeks.

Remus rubbed his
arm where Sirius had been gripping him.

The color in
Sirius's face deepened as he watched Remus rub his sore arm and he
looked severely guilty. "I'm so sorry, Rem, I didn't mean to –"

Remus held up on
hand and Sirius fell silent, biting his lower lip uncomfortably.
"Don't talk to me, Sirius. I don't want to hear your apologies.
Go have fun in the kitchens. I'm going to bed." He turned on his
heel and stalked up to his own dorm, leaving his friends to sort
themselves out.

– –
– – –

"I'm sorry
about yesterday," Lily said hesitantly, shifting her position on
her bed.

Remus looked up
from the notes he was copying. "What?"

"The, er, fight
with Black," Lily clarified. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have
done that. It's just, I always feel like he's taking advantage of
you, because you're so nice, and, well, I know you can stand up for
yourself, but you never do to him, and he's always hogging your
time, and, well, I like spending time with you, so I guess I was a
little jealous." She was blushing and refused to meet Remus's
eyes, focusing instead on the coverlet, which she was picking at with
her nails.

"Come on, Lily,"
Remus flicked the feathered end of his quill at the girl's nose.
"Don't be so hard on yourself. It was flattering, really, that
you both wanted to spend time with me. I was just upset because so
many people were staring. I don't like a lot of attention, you know
that."

"I know," she
agreed. "And I'm sorry."

"Don't be,"
Remus grinned. "Sirius already apologized enough for the both of
you."

Lily's eyebrows
went up in question.

Remus shook his
head. "He's like that, sometimes. He's not really taking
advantage, you know, that's just how he is. I don't mind."

"Yes, but –"

"No, Lily,"
Remus cut her off. "I don't expect you to understand. This is
just one of those things. He's my best friend. I would do anything
to protect that friendship. Putting up with him being the way he is
doesn't bother me, in the long run. It's worth it to me. I have
enough to worry about without constantly telling him off for being
himself."

"You do tell him
off, though," Lily pointed out, trying to lighten the mood. "And
he listens to you."

Remus gave her a
wry grin. "Not often, you know how he and James are."

Lily returned the
grin with a matching one of her own. "Everyone knows how he
and Potter are," she agreed.

Lily's lips
twisted slightly to the side as she thought, then she shrugged,
obviously letting it go. "I suppose it's just a mystery," she
said.

Remus gave an inner
sigh of relief. "Yeah. I suppose so," he nodded. "A mystery."

END

A/N: Not a particularly fabulous
title, but it's an oft-repeated line from Shakespeare in Love,
which I happened to be watching before I started this, and it was
stuck in my head, so I used it. I myself have two theories as to why
Remus might be able to get up those stairs, but I haven't settled
on either one, and I'm not sure it will ever have any real impact
on the main story why he can get up them, so it shall remain a
mystery. You are all welcome to form you own ideas, and feel free to
share! I always like to know what you think. Speaking of… Review
and let me know what you think of the fic!

The author would like to thank you for your continued support. Your review has been posted.